I Dare You to Listen to This All the Way Through

This album has been a soundtrack for prayer these past couple days.  It leaves me in a place of peace and rest.  It is a spoken word album by the lead vocalist from one of my favorite bands with some background music behind the words.  It's all scripture, testimony, and exhortation.

And, IT'S FREE!

You can download it at comeandlive.com.  Mattie is one of several artists that all have allowed their music to be downloaded for free for the encouragement of the body of Christ.  There are several other good albums at C&L as well, but this one is my favorite so far.

These eight tracks total around thirty-three minutes.  Like the title of this post, I dare you to listen to it straight through.  What have you got to lose?  It's free.

I'm in a Band!

Look at the guy in this pic with his hands in his coat pockets.  Totally looks like me with long hair.  These guys are called Great Awakening and are not hardcore.  I saw this pic while reading an article called "Worship Through Experience."  Just had to post this.  So funny.

Why I LOVE Sleeping Giant

I recently ran across a website called HOPECORE.  I noticed that they had interviews with several of my favorite bands that seemed deeper than usual, so I have spent a bit of time recently checking into them.  I want to share one of the questions and answers from one of the interviews with JR Bermuda, the bass player from Sleeping Giant.  You can check out the entire interview here.  

This is the last Q and A from that interview entitled, "Worship is not Music."

This is Sleeping Giant’s third album. Personally, I’ve seen you guys put on one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen, I’ve seen you pray with kids for hours after shows, I’ve seen God use you to heal the sick and I’ve seen people baptized and saved at your shows. What has God been doing in your heart over the lifespan of Sleeping Giant that you just can’t not share with people?

JB: A few profound revelations I have received while playing and touring with the band have changed my life forever. 1. The Holy Spirit IS God. For too long we have seen churches and people groups who make the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit an unacceptable thing within their culture. You cannot have God or Jesus without the Third. They are inseparable. 2. Worship is not music. Worship can be anything from painting to feeding the poor. Worship is the natural response to the love of Jesus. Some people create. Some people sing, others will love other people as a result. Whatever it is, it will cost you something. Worship is sacrifice. 3. Let your faith embrace the idea that God will back you up. Pray for the sick, raise the dead. Heal internal wounds. God has given you the power and ability through the Holy Spirit, and he will do it through you. Go for it! Finally, and most importantly- Waste your life on Jesus. Go in the room, and lock the door. Get alone and spend hours loving him. There is no greater activity in the world. I promise you.

By the way, this is one of the two guys that I had the privilege to see praying for people and healing them after one of their Q and A sessions at Cornerstone. The passion that he walked in rocked my world.  If you ever get the chance to see these guys live or talk to them after a show, Do It!  Seriously, even if you don't like hardcore, if you love Jesus, you will love these guys.  

Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before! Part Three

This one is going to be a bit different.

I spent a decent amount of time pondering within myself and asking God what it takes to have a heart full of good soil and thus end up being fruitful for Him.  I must admit that I don't know much about being fruitful because of all the time in my life that I've spent full of rocks and weeds.  I'm just now getting to some of those particularly nasty weeds and tearing down the strongholds in my mind where they live.  I'm also getting to the point where I realize that I can learn as a I go from my loving Father.  So as I asked Him about this he directed me to Psalm One.

Psalm One holds special significance to me.  One of the greatest privileges of being a part of the church that I attended as a teen was being exposed to Brother Bill Bradbury.  Old triple B always sat in the front row.  He had eyes that let everyone know that he would talk to anyone that was willing to listen.  He even sat on the edge of the stage after service and waited just so he could be available if any of the teens wanted to chat or pick his brain about God and scripture.  Psalm One was his favorite.  He started reading it everyday at the start of the day years ago.  He called it his breakfast.  He started making tally marks inside the cover of his bible every time he would read it.  They spilled to the back cover after the front filled up and elsewhere.  He claimed that there was enough life in that chapter to keep you going for a lifetime.

So I did what any seeking teen would do upon hearing this, I read Psalm One.  Amazingly, I didn't feel any different.  I don't know what I expected, growing wings maybe.  Anyway, over time I dug in a little more and actually started to study it and search through the theme of those six verses.  I believe what God showed me then about that chapter is the answer to how we cultivate good soil in our hearts and keep out the rocks and weeds.

Here goes:

1.  How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!

That's right!  It ends with an exclamation point.  This verse points out three things that a righteous man does not do.  He does not believe like, behave like, or belong to the realm of the ungodly.

2.  But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.

Truth becomes the focus.  God's presence and His word become our lifeline and constant desire.  I believe this happens little by little as we choose to believe God's word as truth, especially in the face of feelings and instincts that oppose that truth.  Will we stand on the truth of God's word or just give it lip service?

3.  He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.

Being planted next to the stream represents placing the Holy Spirit in His rightful place and thus walking in the Spirit.  The fruit, the strength of life, and the victory come from the ability to continually draw from that source of life.  Remember verse three is contingent upon verses one and two. The holiness, being set apart from the common ways, of verse one is what precedes the receptiveness to His Word of verse two!  If we desire to be the good soil which is able to receive His words and bear fruit because of them we must make sure that we are not thinking like the world (believing lies), doing what the world does (actively walking in sinful lifestyles), or belong to their circles (being rooted next to those full of weeds will definitely lead to contamination of the soil of our hearts).  Please note the use of the word rooted!

In short, God demands holiness and promises life!  I love it!

Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before! Part Two

Okay, so I left off with the soil full of weeds.  Some translations use the word thorns instead of weeds.

This soil symbolized the seed that grew but was choked by worry and "the deceitfulness of wealth."  I define "the deceitfulness of wealth" as security.  As in, because I have money and lots of it everything will be alright and I will be happy and fulfilled.  The converse is also true of that mindset--If I don't have lots of money, all kinds of bad things will happen to me and I will be sad and empty.  That sounds like fear to me.


I once heard it said that fear is faith for what you don't want.

Fear is basically what worry is anyway, right?  We don't worry about things that don't matter if they happen or not.  We worry about bad things happening to us because we are afraid of them.  At the heart of worry is distrust in God.  We think that if situation X happens to us that it will be so devastating that we could never recover.  Or even in milder terms, if situation X doesn't happen, then I will not be able to be happy.

Worry at it's core is to believe that God is not in control of our lives and to doubt His protection.

What's crazy about the soil with the thorns/weeds is that the seed actually grows and survives long term, but it doesn't bear fruit.  The thorns are already in the soil when the seed is sown, much like the strongholds of fear in our minds before we begin to walk a life of trusting in Him, but there is enough good soil there for the seed to grow.  This soil is people who really do love God and never want to turn away from Him.  These people are paralyzed by fear and though they don't die off, they never walk in victory over the flesh and the enemy.

The remedy:  obedience (do it anyway).

The only way to kill a weed forever is get it at the root, we all know that by now.  When you go after the weeds of fear, the only way to kill that root is to do it anyway.  God tells us over and over in scripture to not fear and to be courageous.  This is most notably spoken to Joshua, right before going in to take the promised land.  Without courage, being afraid but doing it anyway, we will not possess the promises of God.  Sounds a little bit like picking up a cross, huh?

As far as the good soil goes, how do we keep the weeds from coming back?  How do we avoid the temptations to fill ourselves with that which is not God?  How do we stay soft and humble despite the constant blows of this world and attacks from our enemy?

I hope to answer these questions tomorrow in the unforeseen part three of Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before.  For right now, I'm tired.

Things I Can't Believe I Never Saw Before!

I feel like I have spent most of my life being blind and deaf.  Multiple times in His ministry Jesus talks about people who see without seeing and hear without hearing.  At that phrase there is one of two responses going on in every person who reads it:  Huh?  or complete understanding of something that cannot be truly explained, only experienced.  If you have the first response then the description of the second just sounds like a cop out, but there really isn't any way to make someone see or hear something that they just can't see or hear yet.  

Out of nowhere I just started pondering the parable of the sower tonight. (I think I know what that means.)  You can find it in Matthew 13, Mark 4 or Luke 8.  If you've spent any time in a church at all, I'm sure you're already very familiar with it and wondering why I'm so excited about it.  Pretty basic stuff, right?  

It's just that it only seemed partially practical to me before now.  I always got that the soil with the weeds represented when we choose to focus on that which worries us instead of trusting God and therefore makes us unfruitful in ministry and life.  The text makes that pretty plain when Jesus pulls his disciples aside and gives them the inside scoop.  Even with his explanation, I've still been in the dark on how the other two bad soils apply to us, and, most importantly, how to remedy them.  Tonight I feel like I've been given a glimpse.  

The soil symbolized by the road that has the seed stolen away by the enemy represents the hard of heart.  It is packed down, trodden on repeatedly and has a layer of defense built against penetration.  The seed might as well just bounce off and never of been there in the first place as far as effectiveness goes.  This is the biggest way that people can see without seeing and hear without hearing.  It's not that they aren't given the same chance to bear fruit in the kingdom as everyone else, they are just unable to receive it.  

The remedy:  brokenness.  

The only way to penetrate packed hard soil is with a plow.  Plowing is no fun.  It is a lot of hard work, requires direct attention and intention, and it hurts.  None of us likes to be broken open and that's why most of the time the breaking comes with someone else's hand at the plow--God's.  It is His mercy when He breaks open our hard defenses so that His life can get in.  Think about it, the hard dirt of a packed road can't even receive the softening of the water that falls on it.  It repels that rain.  (Water represents the Holy Spirit, by the way.)  We should always pray for God to break up the clods in our hearts and to bring whatever breaking is necessary to get past the defensiveness of those in our lives who just can't see what God is trying to show them.  

I've always identified most with the rocky soil.  I want so desperately to be close to God, to be full of the Spirit and to have the staying power to not give up or be deceived when things get tough.  I have absolutely no problem getting hyped up about what God is doing or wants from me.  I've just always found myself dying out as soon as it gets hard and the emotions fade.   

The rocky soil, Jesus says, has no depth of soil and therefore cannot produce lasting growth.  This represents the heart that has other stuff taking up the space in it that belongs to God.  The rocks are our idols my friends.  They are all the things that we let into our life that serve no purpose other than to fill us in some way that we should be filling with God (the seed and the water) and the things that help us receive Him (good soil).  

The remedy:  repentance.

We can dig up these rocks by confessing our sins, taking an honest inventory of our hearts and letting God take anything that He wants--no matter how comfortable it makes us, removing those idols, and (here's the kicker) not returning to our sin once we have turned it over to Him.  Whenever we choose to turn to anything other than God to be what fills us, we are putting rocks in the soil of our hearts and sapping our own ability to grow and keep growing once the heat comes.  When we do this, We Are Defeating Ourselves!  

I hit a little on worry earlier and need some more time to process it further so maybe I'll blog some on that along with a few thoughts on the good soil.  

Tune in tomorrow for the epic conclusion of, "Things I can't believe I never saw before!"

My Heart Revealed

If you read my last post you know that this week has been hard for me and that I've been trying to dig through some personal wounds without resorting to fleshly comforts.  In an effort to seek spiritual comfort, I turned to Genesis 15.  This is the story of God promising Abram that his descendants would be too numerous to count.  I have always drawn comfort from this story because of the way that God makes His covenant with Abram.

Abram has some responsibility in preparing for the covenant.  He acquires the correct animals and obeys God's instructions by splitting them in half and setting them out with a path between the halves as was the custom for making a covenant with someone in that culture.  The idea was, so should it be done to me if I don't honor this covenant.  Serious stuff.  Also, in verse eleven, Abram is waiting for God and has to fight off the birds of prey that come to try to eat the carcasses.  Once the sun goes down, in verse twelve, Abram falls into a deep sleep.

While he is asleep, in verse seventeen, God comes down in the form of a smoking oven and a burning torch.  It seems like God uses that imagery of himself in the desert as well.  Anyway, the important part that has always been comforting to me is that God walks through the animals by Himself.  (Maybe twice, once as the oven and once as the torch?)  God hereby takes sole responsibility for fulfilling this covenant.  Now Abram knows that it is completely on Him to bring it about.  What a blessing!

In between these two things though something very odd happens in the end of verse twelve through verse sixteen.  When Abram falls asleep he is filled with terror and dread.  This was to underscore the seriousness of what God was about to tell him.  God reveals to Abram that his descendants would be slaves for four hundred years before possessing the land that God had promised to Abram and the nation that God could make from him.  It's put in there almost like an aside.  It kinda breaks the flow of the story a bit so it got my attention.

At first, I filtered this through my understanding of theology and just accepted it as God doing whatever He wants for His own glory.  This is still a fairly new concept for my personal theology (a year or two).  I'm still working out some of the implications.  We also see this idea in other scripture, most notably in the gospels when Jesus heals the man blind from birth.  When asked whose sin it was that caused his blindness, Jesus answers, "He was born blind so that I could heal him in this moment and be glorified."  (my paraphrase)

Recently I have grabbed on with both hands and sometimes my teeth to this idea of God's glory being the end all be all.  It's the only thing that makes any sense to me, but when you mix in some personal experience you get a different matter altogether.  As I thought through my childhood, particularly my abandonment by my father, I had to admit that I had a good deal of anger toward God.  How could He let me be alone for so long?  I know He was with me all along, but I sure felt alone and worthless all those years.

I realized that at the heart of this anger was a feeling of being deprived of something.  Several somethings.  A father, an example, someone to balance out and support my mother, love, a sense of being normal, stability.  The list goes on.  So of course I'm pissed.  Every person deserves to be taken care of.

Bingo!  There it is!  Entitlement.

At the core of all this anger was the belief that I was robbed of something that I deserved.  A pain free childhood was never promised to me.  God never said that life would be comfortable.  In fact I'm pretty sure He promised me trouble, fiery trials, persecution and possibly death just for siding with Him.  He did promise me though that He would never leave me or forsake me.  He will never abandon me, ever!

I recalled my comments to a friend recently that Jesus did not spare Himself these pains.  He grew up a physical bastard.  More importantly, as His kenosis became complete on the cross, He was actually cut off from His Father.  The only truly pure being became sin for us.  For me.  

Father forgive me for my grumbling and please don't let me die in the desert.  Help me to be patient as you restore me to the promised land little by little.  You are everything!  If Jesus can empty Himself for us all for Your glory, so can I since His Spirit fills me.  If it glorifies You, then being abandoned as a child was a small price to pay to inherit You.

I'm Not Supposed to Admit Feeling Discouraged

Years ago a mentor was praying over me and God gave him an analogy of needing to stay in the flock when under attack.  He said I would be able to avoid the wolves by getting in the flock.  Part of this word included identifying the alpha male of the pack that was trying to eat me alive as being, I Can't.  Man, did I come face to face with that sucker today.  I don't know how many times I failed at work today.  Over and over again.  I tried to come home and pray and get with the Shepherd, but I was so shaken up and angry by the way my day went that it took forever to get my head even a little bit straight.  I guess I should have called someone instead.

Today just reinforced all my fear of failure issues.  Every time I fail, especially when I am criticized or ridiculed for it as was the case with my coworkers today, it's like I'm defenseless.  I did my best on that frickin machine today, I swear, but I still just couldn't get it done.  I didn't have what it took.  In it's simplest form, I was wrong.  So with every comment or snide glance my heart took another blow.  It's like being held down and beaten because there is nothing I can do to make it stop.  My emotions just come in moments like these.  I know that God is with me, but I can't make myself have peace.  The hurt screams louder than any other voice.

I feel like something was taken from me and I don't know how to get it back. I'm falling apart and I know that I'm not seeing things right.  I can't go back to where I was before.  I have to find a way forward.   I have to find out who I really am to Him so I won't be so easily shaken.  Why is it so hard for me to believe in moments like this that God wants that way more than I ever have?  Why does pain cloud my judgment and mental capability so much?  Is there hope that I can hang on long enough for rescue to come and truth to free me from this prison?  When will I truly be able to believe Phil 4:13?  When can I stop feeling guilty for being so weak?

Please pray for me.  My pray-er seems to be broke.

The Rebuke of the Religious Me (And Others)

Alas, you who are longing for the day of the Lord, for what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you?  It will be darkness and not light;
As when a man flees from a lion and and a bear meets him, or goes home, leans his hand against the wall and a snake bites him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light, even gloom with no brightness in it?

"I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; and I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.
Take away from Me the the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps."

"But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

"Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel?"

"You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves.  Therefore, I will make you go into exile beyond Damascus," says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

Amos 5:18-27


Things that I noticed:

1.  God is talking to a people that He is bringing judgment on that thought they were doing what He wanted.  They are even crying out to Him in the midst of a harsh time and looking forward to "the day of the Lord."  Sounds good, right?  The problem is this is just an image that they have allowed themselves to pull over their own eyes.  They do not realize their own distance from God and His heart.  There is an assumed closeness to Him because they are following the Law, but they did not question and challenge the prevailing evil that existed in their midst.  They did not stand for the heart of their God.  So God does not include them in His remnant and even seems insulted that they would think that they would be spared.  In short, they are vastly deceived about their relationship status with Him.

2.  Even their worship, in the ways that God Himself designed and appointed for them to follow, was offensive to Him.  Six times He says that the worship practices were "yours."  This indicates one thing, their heart was not right.  Even though they were doing the exact things that God commanded His people to do, they did them to try to remove guilt from themselves and maintain insurance for themselves.  He goes so far as to call their worship "noise."  He reminds them two verses later that for forty years of the wilderness they did not consistently offer the right sacrifices, but He was in their midst anyway (cross reference Neh. 9:18-21).   He had their chores, not their hearts.

3.  God desires for His people to be in right relationship with Him in two ways--personally and in ministering to those around us.  Justice=ministering to the poor and the oppressed.  Righteousness=personal consecration and drawing near to Him.  Verse 25 says that He desires for these things to "roll down" and be "ever-flowing."  He expects them to be consistent, every day parts of our lives and in abundance.

4.  In the last two verses, God points out that they also (now remember that these are the same people that are performing all the sacrifices and other acts of worship) carried their idols with them.  Images that they set up for themselves.  The comfort that God offered them was not enough, so they kept other images that they set up with them so that they would feel better.  That's the part that gets me the most considering all that I have shared about my current personal battle.  How could they even possibly think that God would save them from the coming disaster with idols in their pockets, on their mantles and in front of their businesses?

I don't know.  Probably the same way that you and I do, except we carry our idols in our hearts too.

I started studying this passage because I was looking into a phrase in the first verse of the next chapter.  Now I see just how relevant it is to follow this as it talks about those who sit in an assumed place of position with God, but who are too comfortable to actually go out and look beyond their own interests.

"Woe to those who are at ease in Zion!"

Because It's Not Really Mine

I cannot count the amount of times I have read, heard someone else read or preach on, or taught myself the message of the master and the talents.  If you have been around Christian circles for any length of time I am sure that this is a familiar passage to you.  Talents were money, large sums of money.  Given to three servants who invested them to varying degrees.  Our talent (our seal, our deposit) is the portion of the  Holy Spirit that lives in us and His gifts in our lives.  This deposit still belongs to God, and He expects us to do something with it.

It strikes me as I wrestle with demons of comfort, that the wicked servant could easily have been motivated to his actions by comfort.  He didn't want to obsess or worry.  Maybe he was afraid that he would just use the talent incorrectly and lose his master's money altogether.  So he buried it.  He didn't even try to use it.  I think he did it so that he could have peace and just not have to think about it anymore.  There was a certain amount of closure in knowing it was safe until his master returned.  I am sure he was comforted by this.  So we have this picture of a servant of the master using the entrusted talent to do nothing more than bring himself comfort. Sounds an awful lot like the spiritual masturbation that has gone on in the church and in my life for quite some time.

It is imperative that I keep this truth at the forefront of my mind--HE IS COMING BACK AND HE EXPECTS ME TO HAVE PUT HIS DEPOSIT TO USE!!!

II Tim 2:4 says, "No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier."

Rhema Blasted

I was at work today thinking over a decision I made yesterday.  I confronted one of my coworkers that I feel has been verbally abusive to me.  In short I told him that I was not his b---- and I did not appreciate being treated like one.  He defended his actions by saying that it is just his personality to be that way and by asking him to not do those things I was asking him to not be himself.  What a load.  He hasn't talked to me at all in the day and half since except to occasionally comment on how little progress I am making on a certain task or mention how slow I am, all in a concerned tone of voice of course.  I know what he is doing.  He's hiding behind his wall because I called him on his crap and he's taking digs at me to try to get even.

In that setting, I was feeling very low today because it took me a very long time to string one of the wire drawing machines that I work with.  Five and a half hours to be precise.  I apologized to my supervisor for being so slow.  She told me that I would only learn by doing it a lot and over and over.

God immediately rebuked me for it!  


He showed me that by apologizing for something that I really had no business being ashamed of that I was agreeing with a false identity the enemy has gotten me to buy into.  As the day went on, I continued to consider just how much of a fight I was willing to put up to lay hold of the worth that God is building into me.  I had a thought go through my mind about how I've always been shy.  God showed me a picture of my son and how gregarious and friendly he is.  We definitely have some teaching to do with him about not talking to strangers without mommy and daddy there.  Anyway, it struck me before and again today that maybe I wasn't always so shy.  Maybe it was something I learned in response to rejection to cope.

II Tim 1:7 clearly came to the front of my mind.    It's crazy how a verse that just yesterday I would have discounted as just one more of those things that I've heard already is rocking my world today.  You know, the verse that all children in Christian homes learn when they are scared of the boogeyman.   " Don't be afraid, Johnny.  God has not given us a spirit of fear."  Then why am I still so scared mom?  Particularly it was the second half of the verse that got me more.


For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power of love and of a sound mind.  


Power, in the context of this passage, means to be bold.  Love means to be humble, considerate and not abusing of that power.  A sound mind is one that is not confused or divided and is able to discern what the will of the Lord is (to borrow from another scripture), or how to use that power.  All these things God has given to me, and to you if your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life.  


It occurred to me that I should repent for believing lies for so long then rejoice at the revelation of such a wonderful blessing.  


God grant me (us?) the grace and strength to walk in the boldness of Your Spirit.  Remove the flesh in me and continue to fill me with more and more of Your Holy Spirit.  Thank You Lord for tearing down the work of the enemy in my mind.  May You get all the glory.  

Ministering to Myself from an Old Journal

If you are reading my blog for the first time today, God wants you to know that it is not by accident.

God has been constantly reminding me of a poem that I wrote almost ten years ago.  I feel compelled to post it here today.  

Carbon Monoxide

I'm surprised I'm not already dead

Due to the years I spent under your spell

Day after day worshiping you instead of Him

Thinking that you could be the life that would free me from my personal hell

Still I breathe you in

You have no distinct smell to detect

You blend in with the life giving truth

And slowly you kill with your slight defect

Slower than the obvious 

So still I notice you not

Though you never become observably noxious

You are working a sure and steady rot

You make it easy to slumber

Because I've worked so hard to obtain

Convinced that He thought of me merely as a number

Not realizing that it was all in vain

As you creep in silently 

Cowardly in the darkness of night

With distortions of the truth you weaken me

By the time I wake you've already stolen my rest, my might 

You make me think that living with you is normal

When there is nothing that is farther from the truth

Setting me up to fail under your false expectations

But I've woken to your lack of proof

I'm one of the lucky few

Who had the opportunity to catch a breath of fresh air

I took that opportunity

And rode that wind straight out of your lair

You will not silently kill me

And I'll sound the alarm loud and clear

Saving as many with me

As many as are willing to hear

As many as can be touched

As many as can be awoken 

As many as will exchange their phony crutch

As many as will listen to any bit of truth spoken

"Wake up and leave this place!

Breathe no longer the foul air of death!

Come to the clean smell of grace; 

Be free from the harsh law and it's stench!"

"Receive the Holy Spirit and His strength

Blowing straight from the mouth of God

The Truth has come that we may have strength

He has come that we may know God!"

I once listened as my youth pastor told our group a quote about religion.  It went something like, "Religion is like an inoculation--it's enough like the real thing to protect you from the real thing."  I was really struck by the idea that religion is a lot like carbon monoxide.  You can sleep yourself to death and not even know it.  Many homes now have CO detectors in case the levels become dangerously high.  Many times I think that's what it takes to wake us up to the danger we're in, some alarm that breaks us out of our normal life long enough for us to actually question the deception that we have just assumed was the real thing.  

The only solution is to breathe deeply of fresh air.  We must seek the Holy Spirit no matter what the implications to our social structure, personal life and most of all comfort level.  I mean our deep comfort level. You know, the things that we tell ourselves about ourselves so that we can feel like we are accepted by God.  

There is no substitute for hearing God speak His acceptance and love over us.  If it has been awhile since you last heard God Himself proclaim His love for you, you need to get someplace open (spiritually, not necessarily physically) and get a breath of fresh air.

Lord I ask that You would have mercy on Your people and give us eyes to see and ears to hear that we would not be so easily deceived.